Seek not for fresher founts afar,Just drop your bucket where you are;And while the ship right onward leaps,Uplift it from exhaustless deeps.Parch not your life with dry despair;The stream of hope flows everywhereSo under every sky and star,Just drop your bucket where you are! Sam Walter FossOpportunity.

Oh, ship ahoy! rang out the cry;Oh, give us water or we die!A voice came oer the waters far,Just drop your bucket where you are.And then they dipped and drank their fillOf water fresh from mead and hill;And then they knew they sailed uponThe broad mouth of the Amazon. Sam Walter FossOpportunity. Let down your buckets where you are, quoted by Booker T. Washington. Address at Atlanta Exposition. See his Life, Up From Slavery.

Mans extremity is Gods opportunity. John Hamilton (Lord Belhaven). In the Scottish Parliament, Nov. 2, 1706, protesting against the Union of England and Scotland. Also found in John Flavels Faithful and Ancient Account of Some Late and Wonderful Sea Deliverances. Pub. before 1691.

The actual fact is that in this day Opportunity not only knocks at your door but is playing an anvil chorus on every mans door, and then lays for the owner around the corner with a club. The world is in sore need of men who can do things. Indeed, cases can easily be recalled by every one where Opportunity actually smashed in the door and collared her candidate and dragged him forth to success. These cases are exceptional, usually you have to meet Opportunity half-way. But the only place where you can get away from Opportunity is to lie down and die. Opportunity does not trouble dead men, or dead ones who flatter themselves that they are alive. Elbert Hubbard. In The Philistine.

I knock unbidden once at every gateIf sleeping, wakeif feasting, rise before I turn awayit is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every stateMortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death, but those who doubt or hesitate,Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore, I answer not, and I return no more. John J. IngallsOpportunity.

Oh! Who art thou so fast proceeding, Neer glancing back thine eyes of flame?Markd but by few, through earth Im speeding, And Opportunitys my name.What form is that which scowls beside thee?Repentance is the form you see:Learn then, the fate may yet betide thee. She seizes them who seize not me. Thomas Love PeacockLove and Opportunity, in Headlong Hall. Imitated from Machiavellis Capitolo dell Occasione.

Why hast thou hair upon thy brow? To seize me by, when met.Why is thy head then bald behind? Because men wish in vain,When I have run past on wingèd feet To catch me eer again. PosidippusEpigram 13. In Bruncks ed. of Anthologia. Vol. II. P. 49. Imitated by AusoniusEpigram 12.

Urge them while their soulsAre capable of this ambition,Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breathOf soft petitions, pity and remorse,Cool and congeal again to what it was.King John. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 475.

O opportunity, thy guilt is great!Tis thou that executest the traitors treason;Thou setst the wolf where he the lamb may get;Whoever plots the sin, thou pointst the season;Tis thou that spurnst at right, at law, at reason.The Rape of Lucrece. L. 876.

Loccasion de faire du mal se trouve cent fois par jour, et celle de faire du bien une fois dans lannée. The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year. VoltaireZadig.